Rolling, the crunch of the stones under my wheels. My first moment of relief. To be out of that house.

I ease out, down the long drive. The trees are close for a quarter mile or so, and I glide between them. Under the canopy the light is squid green. Lime ferns, at rest under the red oaks.

I pull onto the road, and worry, for a fraction, like I do: does the fat branch hides the fast sports car? I always imagine the car is sky blue and round-shouldered, the driver always wears sunglasses and a triangle of red above Gidget bangs, and her mouth makes a perfect, kittenish "O" as we demolish together.

But once again: not today. I only pause when I roll into the street, I never stop. I never have means of escape. Today I live. I turn and climb, up and over the ridges, down into town.

I swerve, just a little, again and again, as I hunt the right CD. I find it and have to remove one from the player first. Then: drumsticks tock, Pete's knife-cut licks, Magic Bus, Live at Leeds, 1970. I roll down the windows, all of them, and adjust the little push-turn knob to fix front/back, bass, treble, everything. Teenage daughters set it wrong.

Tweak volume, one more time, one more time, not to the top, just under; this mini-van sound sucks, rasps out at 9.

I think about which song is IT, the one for today's loud ride thru the narrow heart of my urbane college town. I am on a mission to hip these mush heads to real musical history: Something's Got a Hold on Me, Zappa's Broadway album, Band of Gypsies, Mavis Staples, Al Green, Sand and Foam, A Case of You, To Ramona, The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter.

I sample thru them, glance towards the white sun snapping behind the hills. Kathy's Song? too -ish, too personal. It is between Marat/Sade and Lone Pilgrim. I stumble on You Can't Always Get What You Want, that angelic choir. They will know this one, from fucking commercials, but it feels right today. I hit replay, and again, to time it for just as I cross the bridge at the foot of town.

It's good, I am in the sad horns, then Mick

I sawr her t'day

but there's a policeman right away, at Rte 32: detour. Volume down. And down. Hello, officer. And down.

Yuh kayn't all-ays git

My turn? White glove, finger.

git whut

Wheels right. Waves exchanged.

Trah sumtaimes

Back up, way up, LOUD. Routed thru campus. No one, tho, no satisfaction here.

Once upon a time, near Old Main, some 20-some-odd hollered something about Zappa, thru the blare of Heavenly Bank Account. I nodded. He was impressed, wanted to impress me with a smart remark, in the know, about Frank. I liked it. I liked not understanding what he said, the look on his face when he saw I was just being nice.

I am a lout. I couldn't hear him at all.

__

I can't stop doing this. Playing loud, choosing music for other people. The best moment ever: warm night, crowded streets; there's people everywhere, a big crowd of '09 hippies on the gew-gaw-head-shop-and-pizza-joint block, sitting, tattooed, barefoot, raggedy-assed. A guitar in there, a girl spins and turns; they close the sidewalk, spilling into the street, leaning on cars. Eager high school kids in packs, middle-aged couples elbowing thru.

Then I get them, I get them GOOD: the knotted ball of muscle that is Wang Dang Doodle. Monster-movie guitar;

we're gonna knock down all the windows
we're gonna kick down all the doors

the best R&B, mythic soul song, greatest top 40 hit they never heard,

and when the fish scent fills the air
there'll be shluf tooths everywhere

and I left them flabbergasted in my wake.

__

I rejoin the main drag. I see it: the Memorial Day parade. The police have them pent up on a side street. In front the color guard; I recognize Marine dress blues. Behind the flag are high schoolers, smiling, chatting, holding tall fur hats under their arms, instruments loosely gripped or at their feet.

The soldiers look younger then any of them. Too young. I want to stay and watch, but turn, at this cop's gloved direction, and drift out of town.

Van Morrison now, Wavelength

oh mama, oh mama; she never letchoo down, ohno

Past the dueling fuel stations, the steel carousels of pumps, stacks of blue bottles, and over the thruway on a gentle white arch. The land and road are flat and straight now, mostly, two lanes, no one to play to, no one who'll hear, all the way to the big river. Everyone speeds up.

I'll take you there/ain't nobody cryin/if you're ready now

I pull up to the big T intersection, the one with the green turn arrows and short waits. We are temporarily 2 across here. There is a 1963 rusted-out blue-and-white Bel Air to my right, just ahead. A scarf fans out the window. She looks back. I see part of her face: in her 50s, no makeup, the fabric on her head silken, browns and blues. Joan starts

searching for my double, looking for
complete evaporation to the core

She hears this. Looks for me in the mirror, turns, in stages, with difficulty, hangs her whole head out the window, finds my eyes. I look away. The light changes.

I must have thought that there was nothing more

I curve my arm out for breeze. We pull up to the next light, roll to a stop. She is ahead of me now, leans her head out again, this time pointing straight up, her eyes closed, neck awkward on the window frame.

Oh but if I had the stars from the darkest night
and the diamonds from the deepest ocean

Green again. She is slow to start, doesn't speed up.

I'd trade them all for your sweet kiss 

A car behind me hits the horn hard. She and I roll slowly together. I can feel my heart pounding in my throat, jaw.

for that's all I'm wishin' to be ownin'...

She stops. I sit up.

Right there, in the fast lane on 9W, she gets out. The cars are pulling around, swerving, from both directions. She flattens against her car, sidesteps back to me. Everyone sees her now, the honking is regular. Some race engines as they pass. I hear words, anger. Lots of cars. The bridge is near, the city just beyond.

She slows at my fender, steadies as if on a boat, steps methodically, head cocked, her eyes on mine. I feel like taking off my shades and I never take off my shades.

For the same thing that
I would want from you today,
I will want, again, tomorrow...

I take in the cheap brown cotton skirt, too long, too tight; rather, she is too big. I feel ashamed to think: pear-shaped. She wears a flowered shirt with small lemon cuffs and collar.

She is to me now; there is a mole on her face, faint hair along her lip. The scarf is complex and beautiful. She has been crying.

Or is it just her pale, rose-blotched Irish face, the wet blue eyes? She always looks this way? Her mouth is open, ready to say. Too loud; I reach for the knob, make ready some cautious civility. She says "wait", shakes her head no, puts her fingers on my bare arm.

She leaves them there.

A car brakes, guns it. Oncoming has slowed, but not enough. She looks behind her, at the cars, is again about to say.

I don't know when I'll be coming back again
it depends on how I'm feelin'

This is fast water, this is a dream, it is absurd: I know it is about the songs, and it is my fault, this is what I wanted, what I want, attention paid to my old songs. My addiction. I don't want her to die.

"Are you alright?"

O a false clock tries to tick out my time,

She turns and looks at me, and I think she might be crying now, trying to speak. Like she is biting tough bread. She brings the other hand up to my arm. I look at her high smooth forehead.

and the dirt of gossip blows into my face

Then she leans out, like a runner catching her breath, her ass out, her head down, facing the blacktop. The oncoming cars adjust uncertainly.

and the dust of rumor covers me.

"Ma'am?" I say. "I think we should get out of the road." I wonder if she has had chest pains. Her left hand slides down, grips the door handle. She has a gun, I think. She wants to dance, right here, on 9W. But she just holds on.

She says "I heard it."

She is sober, I realize. She looks up and her mouth opens, and now she does cry, silently. She sways.

but if the arrow is straight, and the point is slick

I see at last the parched, empty skin above her ears. For a moment I can only stare. Her mouth pulls down harder; I am afraid of the sound that is to come, but she just shakes, her forehead pulls toward the center, her eyes pinned to me. The cars have slowed some, adapting to us.

Then I raise my arm, her fingers slide down but hold on. My hand shakes at the last moment; I turn my palm and put the back of my left hand against her left cheek. My arm is diagonal across her; I think about her breasts for a fraction. I touch her just so; she leans against my hand: it is unplanned. I worry she will fall back into traffic.

She stops rocking, there is drool in a string from her lower lip; a sob shifts her up, under her shirt. I notice how tightly her scarf covers her head, like a wimple.

I pull my hand across her face, brush her nose, and cup her face, my elbow wrong, my wrist bent. The deep water slows around us, steadies. The flow of sound is continuous. She close her mouth, tightens up her lower lip.

so I'll take my stand. And remain as I am.

My hand holds her soft, sagging cheek, my thumb damp against the corner of her mouth. She pulls in at last, but my arm cannot move so I slide around her, along her shoulder. More honks. Tires squeal.

She is sobbing under my arm. My right hand goes to her; I smooth the scarf. I look down at where it has shifted, at the pale skull, at the few, long, wiry, grey-brown hairs.

"Shhh." I say. "You have to get out of the street." You'll get killed, I think; no one does this anymore, just Do Anything, follow our heart like this. We are all normal now, I think.

But we stay that way: me patting the brown and blue silk, her burrowed in, the last of the sun just broken chips in the trees.

If I were a witch's hat

She is comfortable in my shoulder. She smells of ribbon candy and pine. I think about police cars, then about her plainness.

Then I lean in and kiss her bare head, as sweet as pollen, as sweet as a father with three daughters can kiss a dying woman. She makes a small sound, then she hiccups in a thready breath.

Stepping like a tightrope walker
putting one foot after another

Before she raises her head -- to apologize, to look at me, to say she Really Is OK, she was just Nostalgic, before the stand-up-and-pull-back, back into normal life, into restraint and dignity, and not playing in traffic, before we climb back onto the shore -- she reaches up, blind, with her left hand; she finds my face, and gives a lover's firm press; then she strokes me just once, and the movement of her fingertips counts each unshaven hair.

Wearing black cherries for rings

No pointless, forgettable glosses on this unspeakable thing. She will not look at me until she has backed up and crept along her car, ready to get in. I realize she left it running. I glance back at the headlights coming around.  When I look back she is gone.

--

I no longer crank up Koko Taylor or Annie Lenox or James Brown, cruising past kids and tourists in town, and the spill from the bars, on my way home. To hell with the honking hyenas who inherit, with their idols, their in-sync choreography, their personal earbuds.

Fuck their education. Now I play for someone else.

Late at night, when it's warm, I sometimes go up the hairpins on 44 to the high ridge, towards Minnewaska, to park at the overlook. The valley is full of old ears, like mine. Windows open, down below, lights out, but before sleep: listening, to the peepers and the creaking stream and the wash of leaves overhead.

Shut the light.
Shut the shade.

I roll down and crank up, and play a song, a gift to the sold out, fat-assed, waxy dull, near-gone and fearful, the inconsolable, the unsteady and once-hip, the friends of death. I pour it out to them, my brothers and sisters.

You don't have
to be afraid.

I imagine they hear my clattering tune, echoing in from the eerie black trees, amazed at the familiar memory of it. The pale bones of long ago rise and flouresce in the darkness.

And I feel her fingertips painted on my cheek.

I'll
be your
baby tonight.